10 July 2013

Well, the last time I was posting, Clowny was walking. About a month later, he stopped walking. That change went hand in hand with Clown stopping prednisone. He walked around, slowly, at Mountain Hounds in Gatlinburg but for the most part he stayed in our room and was miserable.

He has changed medicine twice and has been to see a holistic vet for acupuncture and laser therapy, but is still not walking. His back legs work and are responsive to pain, but there is some sort of disconnect in his spine so he can't make them stay under him.

Our lives now are consumed with picking him up to go outside, washing pee pads, washing blankets, pleading with him to eat, and watching him struggle when he slips out of our hands and onto the floor with a crash.

There hasn't been much to blog about, really. Two weeks after his...accident? Onslaught of symptoms? Two weeks after that I finished for the summer at Clemson and have been taking all the interpreting work I can get in order to pay for his treatments and keep all four of us fed. I want to get out of the house, but with limited funds and his limited mobility, I feel guilty if I'm gone more than a few hours. And poor Clowny smells like a bad day at the assisted living facility...but being a greyhound we can't bathe him every day. His fur would likely fall out!

I don't think I've slept more than 2 hours at a go since Memorial Day. He cries when he needs his pee pad changed. He cries when he poos. He cries when he wants water, or when he just needs to roll over. And thanks to my supersonic hearing that I'm positive I inherited from my mother, every time he cries I wake up. To be fair, I also wake him when he licks...which he does a lot, probably just to alleviate his own boredom.

I'm also participating in another Camp NaNoWriMo this month, so I'm already feeling a bit guilty about using my writing time here rather than on the Work In Progress.

There are those in my professional life that have been insensitive at best and downright insulting at worst about my dedication to my dog and what it means for my life. To be fair, the one person I'm thinking of now has also made insulting comments about my choice to put my husband and our life above my duty to my work or how ridiculous is it that I want to have children, so I'm not sure that I should be bothered too much by comments about how much I love my dog.

Anyway, all of this is not a cry for attention or pity, far from it. We have a wheelchair for Clowny now that we are trying to make work, and the next step after that will be a ramp for him to be able to go in and out the front door. This post is meant more as a catch up...so that those who do understand why we do what we do for this amazing creature that shares our home and hearts will know what's going on. Hug your hounds and take every chance you can to see them run, play, and even walk across the room to beg for a treat or just gaze at you. Trite as it may sound, you just never know when those things will be taken away.